I wanted to let you all know that we had a very good meeting with staff from the Joint Committee on Printing on Tuesday during the ALA Day on the Hill event. Both Matt McGowan and Mike Harrison participated and the discussion was quite good. They were both engaged in the conversation and the Q&A was wide ranging. While I am not so naive as to believe that they rushed back to their office to change their approach I do think that they heard us and appreciated our frank comments. I hope that we can build on this initial successful contact in order to give JCP access to some new voices on the issue of access to government information.

I wanted to let you all know that we had a very good meeting with staff from the Joint Committee on Printing on Tuesday during the ALA Day on the Hill event. Both Matt McGowan and Mike Harrison participated and the discussion was quite good. They were both engaged in the conversation and the Q&A was wide ranging. While I am not so naive as to believe that they rushed back to their office to change their approach I do think that they heard us and appreciated our frank comments. I hope that we can build on this initial successful contact in order to give JCP access to some new voices on the issue of access to government information.

−

I want to express my appreciation to Lynne Bradley and Tara Olivero for setting the meeting up and I hope that you will too if you have a chance.

+

I want to express my appreciation to Lynne Bradley and Tara Olivero for setting the meeting up and I hope that you will thank them too if you have a chance.

Revision as of 14:18, 19 October 2007

10-19-07

Communicating with ARL

Colleagues,

It was good to see so many of you at FDLC this past week. Although there is a lot that I need to follow up from that conference I wanted to let you know that Cass Hartnett, Chair-elect, and I had a very good meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Prue Adler, Associate Executive Director of ARL. She had a number of suggestions and ideas about GODORT and government information many of which were in line with my own stated goals for GODORT.

I know that in the past the Roundtable's relationship with ARL has been a matter of concern with many of our members and I want to assure you that I will be taking Prue's recommendations to heart. One area that I will try to immediately work into my routine is to share with Prue issues that may directly affect ARL libraries but I need those of you in ARL institutions to help me recognize those issues.

As always I welcome your recommendations on how to work more effectively with those organizations that I am not directly "plugged into." By working together with our fellow professional organizations we can build a stronger GODORT and more effectively influence the future of access to government information.

Thanks, Bill

9-26-07

I had a chance earlier in the month to travel to GPO (the advantages of being in Baltimore) and see a brief presentation - "proof of concept" - of the FDSys for agencies. It was very well thought out and seemingly effective. The biggest concern expressed by those who attended seemed to be less about the product and more about the inability of GPO to get the agencies to participate. As suggested by one GPO official a change in how Title 44 is applied would help this but I, for one, am reluctant to open up Title 44 for revision until we have a closer agreement on what sort of outcome we would like. Getting back to FDSys another concern was the creation of two silos of data. While GPO officials claim that a search in the Catalog of Government Publications would turn up FDSys publication submission data they were not exactly clear on how, or at what point in the process it would happen.

Still, they are clearly on the right track product wise and it was gratifying to see even a small portion of the effort getting underway.

8-23-07
UPCOMING GODORT/SLA PROGRAM AT FDLP

How Do Journalists Use Government Information?

Ever wonder how journalists find and use government information? On
October 15, New York Times reporter Scott Shane
(http://tinyurl.com/2nfugw) and Washington Post research editor Alice
Crites, MLS (http://tinyurl.com/2mrybn) will address this question and
related issues. Join us for a lively program sponsored jointly by ALA's
Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) and SLA's Government
Information Division (DGI).

An excellent proposal for the future of government information can be found in Congressional Information & the Internet from the "Openhouse Project." [2]

This is a conversation that GODORT might want to be more involved in.

7-2-07

I wanted to let you all know that we had a very good meeting with staff from the Joint Committee on Printing on Tuesday during the ALA Day on the Hill event. Both Matt McGowan and Mike Harrison participated and the discussion was quite good. They were both engaged in the conversation and the Q&A was wide ranging. While I am not so naive as to believe that they rushed back to their office to change their approach I do think that they heard us and appreciated our frank comments. I hope that we can build on this initial successful contact in order to give JCP access to some new voices on the issue of access to government information.

I want to express my appreciation to Lynne Bradley and Tara Olivero for setting the meeting up and I hope that you will thank them too if you have a chance.

7-6-07

If you have not taken a look at the July 2nd report from the National Security Archive on FOIA you should. Like all of their efforts this it is an excellent review of the challenges faced in getting FOIA requests filled. 40 Years of FOIA, 20 Years of Delay[3]

Introductory comments from ALA Annual 2007

Thank you for the opportunity to serve as the Chair of GODORT. It is indeed an honor and I appreciate the trust that you have placed in me.
As many of you already know if you read my nomination statement when I ran for Chair and I hope that only a few of your are hearing this for the first time. I really intend for my tenure as Chair to be focused on positioning GODORT for the future. To that end I want to encourage all of you to think seriously about the type of organization we want GODORT to become in the next few years. The implementation of virtual membership, decreasing the number of meetings at annual 2008 (perhaps by relying more on e-mail and the GODORT Wiki in-between Midwinter and annual) and increasing the education and training opportunities for our members will be my priorities in the coming year.
One very important effort that has just gotten underway is our Roundtable's strategic planning effort. The strategic planning process will be lead by Linda Johnson and Marianne Ryan and includes a mix of "old hands" and newer GODORT members who have been asked to focus on the needs of the organization and to help us improve our services and outreach efforts. As part of this process the Membership Committee will be sending out a survey to evaluate our services and mission. I know that many of us are bombarded with survey requests but I really want to encourage each of you to respond to this survey. It will help us to better prepare a plan for the future if we know with some degree of assuredness what our members value (or not) about GODORT. We will also be working with ALA to get the survey out to former members as well.
Another challenge that I have asked Steering to consider is the question of virtual membership. I had several people ask me about this as an option when I approached them about serving in GODORT and it quickly became apparent that our organization must explore this opportunity for membership. I am calling on each Committee and Task Force Chair to communicate with your members about this so that by Mid-Winter we might be in a position to move forward on a plan to share with membership.
Although you have been kind enough to elect me as your Chair I want to stress that I do not claim to be an expert on ALA or on the myriad of government information issues we will likely face in the coming year. I not only welcome in-put and guidance from the membership I will require it if we are to be effective. So please feel free to call on me if you have questions or just want to talk as I will certainly be calling on you.
I am looking forward to a truly collaborative year.
Bill Sleeman